City Survey Says San Franciscans Give High Marks to Recreation and Parks

City Survey Says San Franciscans Give High Marks to Recreation and Parks

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (RPD) has received high marks from San Franciscans as the result from 2011 San Francisco City Survey has shown. The survey shows that 35% of residents have indicated that they visit a park at least once a week, and when compared to the other five benchmarking cities, San Francisco residents are more likely than four of the five cities to participate in a recreation and parks department program. San Franciscans’ satisfaction with the quality of parks and park buildings increased significantly from 2009. RPD is pleased with this result as it also supports RPD’s Park Scores, which are at an all-time high of 91%.

According to the City Survey, 72% of residents are satisfied with the availability of walking and biking trails. RPD is particularly gratified by this result because the department has made significant investment in trails in recent years through volunteer events and bond funds. In June 2011, RPD opened the Interior Greenbelt Trail at the Stanyan Street entrance which connects Cole Valley to the Mt Sutro open space and 72 acres of trail network. RPD also completed Cornona Heights and Billy Goat Hill trail improvements which rehabilitated the entire network of trials in that area.

In addition, not only one third of San Francisco residents have utilized RPD recreation programming in 2011, 65% of them are satisfied with the quality of interactions with recreation and parks staff. The result is significantly higher than any other cities included in the survey and a significant increase from previous surveys for San Francisco. With the new recreation model where recreation staffs are assigned to staff programs according to their expertise instead of recreation center locations, in year 2010-2011, RPD’s recreation programming had 49,016 registrations, and generated $3,179,223 in revenue. While the survey suggests that the satisfaction with interactions between resident and Recreation and Parks staff is already fairly high, RPD continues to work on improving the quality of the interactions.